(...continued)

<<Because of the chasm between us do you feel hatred toward me>>

No way! If you are a good person and a seeker of truth as seems, then I find you no less religious, no less on your best path to God, than many who parrot the view that God exists.

<<I execrate what religion has done to people throughout history>>

Yes, I can identify with your anger, but those things were done by people, some of them truly despicable, not by religion.
Between the two of us, I am the one who should be hurt most by their actions because they bring religion to ill-repute.

<<I fail every time I try to reconcile the choice [of subservience] with common sense or rational reasoning.>>

I think I could help you to reconcile this, but right now I think you could be too upset for a rational explanation.

<<Consolidated religion contains within its own DNA the code for violence>>

Oh yes, religion is a living thing: coagulated religion is hardly still a religion.

<<I believe there is just one god less than what you believe>>

I am a Hindu, so this still leaves plenty :)

Yuyutsu and Pogi,

I would appreciate you both taking the time by considering the content mentioned below, perhaps this may explain confusion related to Christian religious belief today, any comments appreciated.

YouTube video linked below, you can skip the start and just watch the section (part I of the video between minutes 4.28 to 31.55).
http://youtu.be/pTbIu8Zeqp0

Hi Yuyutsu,

You suggest that " .... Religion is no more a construct of the human intellect than light, energy, space, time, etc., existing whether or not humans try to conceptualise it with their imperfect intellect."

Still trying to get my head around that. Do you mean that, if religion is a construct, so are light, energy, time, etc. ? That Isaac Walton invented gravity, and if he hadn't, nobody would be dying falling over cliffs etc.? Bastard ! That Kopernik and Galileo invented the heliocentric system, and before that, there was a terracentric system ? That time started the instant somebody tried to measure it, with no time passing ever before that ? So if any of us stopped thinking about time, it would stop ?

In other words, the world is as we think it is. If we think something different, the world thereby becomes different. I think they call that idealism in philosophy, or Berkeleian idealism. The power of the mind, I suppose.

So I could wander along the top of a cliff with no fear, as long as I denied the 'existence' of Walton's so-called gravity ? Vice versa, there is a heaven because I wish there to be one ? Along with its 72 virgins at my beck and call ? Sweet.

Fascinating garbage :)

Joe

Dear Joe,

If this is what you understood from my last post, then I may have a serious problem in expressing myself in English.

What I meant, and please help me to correct my grammar if what I wrote did not mean that, is that light, energy, space, time AND religion, all pre-exist regardless whether humans try to conceptualise them.

---

Dear Geoff,

I watched the video. While I think that some of it has a grain of truth, the dishonesty of those who prepared the movie strikes me, whose eagerness to prove what they want outweighs decent enquiry.

Only few among us are experts in ancient/Egyptian mythology and astrology, making it easy for anyone to tell us whatever they like about it, which we may agree to out of ignorance. While my knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans approaches zero, I do know my bible and the scriptures on Shri Krishna.

Joseph had 11 brothers - not 12 as the movie states.
Krishna was not resurrected and his mother, Devaki, was not a virgin, in fact he was her eighth son.

The logic of the producers is also wanting in honesty. It is one thing to suggest how the stories about Jesus came about, yet another to conclude, without evidence, that it was a pre-meditated operation with the intention of controlling the masses (even if it ended up that way).

As I see it, on the balance of probabilities, Jesus was the natural son of the carpenter Yoseph and his wife Miriam. He was born around June or October (the Jewish festivals of Pentecost and Tabernacles). He was a great enlightened reformer and spiritual reviver, born among the Jews to save them from the horrible degeneration and corruption of their religion. He was not a descendant of King David, thus he could not be a Jewish Messiah.

It is quite possible that as the years went by, cultural/astrological elements kept ornamenting the story of Jesus until the original information became obscured by the sheer mass of irrelevant ornaments.

Hi Yuyusu,

Sorry, I misunderstood you, I think. You say, " .... light, energy, space, time AND religion, all pre-exist regardless whether humans try to conceptualise them."

Do you mean that religion exists, like light, energy, time, space, regardless of whether or not there are humans to experience it ? Doesn't that presuppose the existence of a god or gods ? i.e. you're begging the question ?

Or does religion have its 'natural' laws just as light and space and time do ? Like F = ma ? Or E = mc2 ? Does heaven have mass ? Does God have mass ? So are they subject to gravity or are there heavenly anti-gravitational laws ? Does heaven orbit the earth ? What did God do before he invented time ? i.e. from everlasting up to the present ? So God has an enormous capacity for utter boredom ? As well as an inordinate love of beetles (Haldane) ? And blow-flies ? And microscopic parasites ?

Truly, the ways of God are unknowable.

Joe

Greetings Yuyutsu.
You write: "Religion is no more a construct of the human intellect than light, energy, space, time, etc., existing whether or not humans try to conceptualise it with their imperfect intellect."

Like Loudmouth, I have serious doubts about your assertion. The scientific theory of the Big Bang is emerging not so much like a thunderclap next to one's ear but more like a flower opening before one's eyes at a dimensionless point. Have you listened to the sound of a flower opening? Actually, the title Big Bang is an assinine journalistic alliteration that has no basis in fact. That there was some kind of sound is not known but there is an almost isotropic relic radiation that permeates every part of "empty space" between the stars, galaxies etc. This relic is called the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB. US radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered it in 1964 and were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1978 for its discovery. It is accepted as a relic of the event of "creation". It is accepted that light, energy, space, time and the four fundamental forces of nature, gravity, the electromagetic force, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force all came into being at or very shortly after the BB occurred.

The dissertation above is necessarily brief and accurate enough for my purpose.

So, to the very best of human knowledge whatever there was prior to the BB is at present beyond our comprehension because our Universe's time began with the BB. That you suggest religion was "created" at the same time and is a measurable component of our universe and as fundamental to the universe as the previously mentioned features, seems, not to put too fine a criticismm, just a whisker self-serving and pompous. Now you may protest, "That does not mean........etc, etc." But please be advised that no emotional special pleading or special revelation will convince this atheist that you and your ilk have special insight that confounds the discoveries so far as they have been established by our technology.

cont.......